This week in affordable housing news, the Los Angeles City Council sought to put a stop to a wave of eviction notices being issued before new statewide renter protection rules become law on January 1. According to the Orange County Register, six cities, including Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Redwood City, have passed emergency bans in recent weeks on no-fault evictions until this year’s legislation, AB 1482 (Chiu), goes into effect. This week, LA approved a new rent subsidy as well, with the city providing payments for up to three months to tenants facing rent hikes greater than 8%. As reported in the Los Angeles Times: “Housing officials have estimated that for every $1 million spent on the program, approximately 250 to 400 families could be assisted, depending on how much aid they need.” The council voted to provide roughly $3 million for the program.

A new report by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shows how dangerous California’s affordable housing crisis has become—with “the number of homeless residents dying in Los Angeles County from 2013 to 2018,” according to Curbed Los Angeles. The number of deaths during the five-year period rose from 536 to more than 1,000. Most of these deaths are due to drug and alcohol use, but an equal number were due to injury, violence, and “transportation-related injuries.” “Homeless people are in fact dying at a higher rate because they’re homeless,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of LA’s Department of Public Health. The homeless population in Los Angeles has grown to almost 60,000 people.

As local governments seek solutions to a lack of affordable housing, the San Francisco Chronicle shares the story of a teacher in the city who commutes almost 5 hours each day from Sacramento. “It’s not logical. My students tell me all the time, ‘You’re crazy for commuting so far!’,” said Kimberly Rosario, 35, who can’t afford to live in San Francisco and has to leave by 4am to beat Bay Area traffic. “I shouldn’t have to commute 100 miles one way to my job. I should be able to live in the community where my students live.” Next week, San Francisco voters will consider two local ballot measures aimed at addressing the city’s affordable housing shortage—including a $600 million housing bond, the city’s largest ever, and a companion measure that would accelerate development of teacher housing and affordable housing.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Californians Could See New Rent Control Measure On November 2020 Ballot
Capital Public Radio
Less than a year after California voters decisively rejected Proposition 10, backers of that measure say they are close to qualifying a similar rent control initiative for the November 2020 ballot. The campaign for the Rental Affordability Act says this measure is different from Prop. 10 because it would chip away at the state law blocking rent control on units built after 1995, but not get rid of it entirely. 

New law aims to get more houses built in California
Inland Empire Business Daily
California’s much-beleaguered housing industry may finally be getting some help from Sacramento. On Oct. 9, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 330 – also known as the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 – into law. The legislation, written by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, is meant to boost homebuilding in California by addressing some of the longtime complaints of the state’s homebuilding industry.

HOUSING CRISIS

California Housing Crisis Podcast: Should the state have limits on growth?
Los Angeles Times
Beverly Hills Mayor John Mirisch is one of the more provocative characters in the debate over the cause of California’s housing problems. In one recent speech, he compared the state lawmakers who are trying to strip some power from local governments to the villain in the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Special Podcast: Sizing Up California’s Housing Shortage
Voice of San Diego
California’s housing crisis has, for some time now, become the dominant political issue in the state. The median home costs nearly $600,000, and the average rent is $1,000 a month more than the national average. So, how did we get here? And what do we need to do to correct the market? Liam Dillon, who covers housing for the Los Angeles Times, moderated a fascinating discussion at this year’s Politifest with a group of housing experts, including Sen. Scott Wiener, the author of Senate Bill 50, which would allow for increased density near transit.

Google v. Apple: While one takes on the housing crisis, the other stands back
Mercury News
They changed the world with their tech products, employ vast swaths of the Bay Area’s workforce and together own more than $16 billion in Silicon Valley property. But Google and Apple — the valley’s two biggest tech property owners — differ wildly in a critical aspect: the way they use their resources in response to the region’s chronic housing crisis. 

SF teacher’s housing nightmare: Waking at 3:30 a.m. to drive from Sacramento home
San Francisco Chronicle
On the wall of Kimberly Rosario’s classroom at San Francisco’s Mission High hangs a list of answers, from A to Z, that finish the sentence, “Doing math is …” Analyzing. Building. Calculating … Zeroing in on solutions. The same can be said for how Rosario, a geometry teacher, pieces together ways to make her stressful life work. She and her husband, who does administrative work at Kaiser, can’t afford to buy a home anywhere near her workplace in one of the most expensive cities in the world — so she commutes from Sacramento.

Editorial: Climate change isn’t changing us enough, California
San Diego Union Tribune
It’s been decades since widespread scientific acceptance of the danger posed to the climate by burning fossil fuels began manifesting itself in urgent calls for Americans to change their ways and stop using cars so much. As these views have grown in acceptance among both politicians and the public, the result has been efforts across the nation to build and promote local and regional transit infrastructure, and to adopt “smart growth” planning concepts that allow for much denser growth, which makes transit an easier and more attractive option.

Op-Ed: Time for realistic California housing goals
Grass Valley Union
Build 3.5 million new dwelling units across California by 2025 and this state’s housing shortage will be solved, Gov. Gavin Newsom prescribed during his campaign last year and many times since. But it’s not happening, and the problems of affordability and homelessness have grown no easier to solve under Newsom than before his election, despite many months of talk and a slew of new laws designed to make permitting and building new units easier and less bureaucratic.

TENANT PROTECTION

L.A. renters facing big hikes could get help from the city
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles will cushion the blow of rent hikes for some tenants facing big increases, under a new program approved Wednesday at City Hall. The Emergency Renters Relief program is meant to help tenants who are facing “exorbitant” hikes before California implements a new law capping rent increases. Under the program, L.A. will provide payments for up to three months to help eligible tenants who are facing rent increases exceeding 8%, according to housing officials.

‘Rising tide’ of tenants getting 60-day move-out notices in advance of statewide rent cap
Orange County Register
A “rising tide” of California tenants have been getting pre-emptive, 60-day “notices to vacate” their apartments in advance of AB 1482, the state’s new rent cap law, as landlords take advantage of a window that closes Thursday to raise rents before the law kicks in on Jan. 1, tenants rights groups report. Even though most tenants are paying their rent and obeying the rules, many have been told they need to move out by Christmas.

Editorial: Rent control law predictably leads to evictions
Orange County Register
When the government caps the prices that private companies can charge for goods and services, it leads to unforeseen – and in many cases, foreseen – consequences. Almost all of them are negative. For instance, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a so-called “anti-rent-gouging” bill that simply is a statewide rent-control measure. The state will soon forbid most landlords from increasing rent prices by more than 5 percent a year plus inflation.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

New SF fee on office buildings to pay for affordable housing sails through
San Francisco Chronicle
In most cities, a proposal to double fees on office development would elicit dire warnings: visions of hemorrhaged jobs and empty office towers. But in San Francisco, which has seen jobs grow 38% since 2010, legislation to double a fee on office development over the next few years breezed through the legislative process, winning unanimous support on Tuesday from the Board of Supervisors.

San Jose ahead of new push to disclose housing development fees
San Jose Spotlight
The high expense of building new housing isn’t a novel concept to Californians, but impact fees tied to that development account for a large portion of budgets. Across the state, studies show housing development fees in the Golden State were nearly three times the national average in 2015, which accounted for up to 18 percent of median home prices in some cities. Many local leaders have lamented that the outsized fees are causing housing developers to flee and build elsewhere.

Huntington Beach denies it is ‘anti-housing’ after group sues over rejection of 48-unit project
Los Angeles Times
Huntington Beach’s city attorney is disputing a nonprofit organization’s claims in a lawsuit alleging that the city rejected a 48-unit residential project planned for Ellis Avenue because of complaints by nearby residents, even though the proposal complied with zoning laws. Californians for Homeownership said the lawsuit, filed Monday, is its first under the state’s Housing Accountability Act, also known as the anti-NIMBY law, referring to the acronym for “Not in my backyard.”

Berman expects big legislative push on boosting housing supply
Palo Alto Online
For Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, the magnitude of the state’s housing crisis hit close to home last week, when he walked out of a CVS Pharmacy in downtown Palo Alto and nearly walked into a homeless person using a plastic bag as a toilet.

HOMELESSNESS

Homeless deaths in LA County doubled between 2013 and 2018
Curbed Los Angeles
The number of homeless residents dying in Los Angeles County doubled from 2013 to 2018, according to a report released Tuesday by county public health officials. The number of deaths soared from 536 to 1,047. The death rate, which accounts for increases in the homeless population, also increased in that time period—by more than one-third, the report found.

Fact Check: Does California really have ‘90,000 unsheltered’ homeless people?
PolitiFact
California’s homeless crisis now ranks as one of the top concerns in the state, tied for first with jobs and the economy in a recent survey. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who chairs the governor’s commission on homelessness, has taken notice and promised greater urgency.  He recently called for his city to spend $30 million to jump-start the mass production of tiny homes, structures 500 square feet or less. 

Op-Ed: The Private Sector Has a Key Role to Play in Carrying Out the Homelessness Plan
Voice of San Diego
The homeless crisis is San Diego’s most critical issue. If our community comes together, we have the opportunity to lead California and the country with a best-in-class, high-impact approach that alleviates the suffering of homelessness. Last week the San Diego City Council unanimously adopted The Community Action Plan on Homelessness. This action plan was researched and produced by the Corporation for Supportive Housing.